Dirty DOD

Going to war makes a big mess, and cleaning up is never fun. But the U.S. Department of Defense doesn’t seem all that keen on cleaning up its own backyard either.

Said to be the biggest polluter of the U.S., the Department is resisting a “final order” from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up three bases in Maryland, Florida and New Jersey contaminated with toxic chemicals that are leaching into water aquifers and soil. The chemicals, says the agency, pose an “imminent and substantial” danger. Neither will the Pentagon sign an agreement to clean up 12 other sites that the EPA says are among the most polluted in the country. Rena Steinzor, who helped draft the environmental regulations and now teaches law at the University of Maryland, said the Pentagon’s “stunning” attitude displays “the height of amazing nerve,” reports The Washington Post.

The Pentagon has monkeyed with environmental protection for years, from fighting for new standards on determining chemical toxicity to balking at cleaning up some 25,000 contaminated sites across the country.

But their pig-headedness at least won’t cost them: under executive branch policy, the EPA won’t sue the Pentagon or impose the standard $28,000 a day fine reserved for other polluters.

by PATRICK LEJTENYI